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Osaka Stadium’s Housing Expo

Where the magnificent Namba Parks
stand today at Naniwa-ku, in Osaka, Japan, once stood Osaka’s baseball
stadium. Opened in 1950 with a capacity of 32,000 people, the stadium
was home to the Nankai Hawks baseball team, but when the Hawks moved to
Heiwadai Stadium in 1988, the stadium was sold to Fukuoka City. For the
next two years, Osaka Stadium became the temporary home of the Kintetsu
Buffaloes, who played about a dozen games here. The last official
baseball game was held on August 2, 1990. Despite being a weekday, some
29,000 visitors came to watch the final game.
Long before the
stadium was sold to Fukuoka City, it had been decided that the sporting
venue had to go as part of the Namba district redevelopment project. But
the inevitable was delayed until the late 1990s. During this time, the
bowl-shaped stadium continued to function as a venue for
baseball—amateur, this time. The National High School Baseball
Championship was held here, and as many as 72 games were played during
the season.A residential neighborhood inside Osaka Stadium. Photo credit: Naoya Hatakeyama, 1998
One
of the most interesting repurposing of the stadium happened in 1991. A
trade group leased the venue and used it to showcase various model homes
from several construction companies. The entire playing arena was
transformed into a mini residential neighborhood with fake streets,
street lights and with cars parked outside homes. Houses were neatly
arranged in rows, and lights were turned on to create the illusion of
occupancy. It was a strange sight.
Years later, photographs of
this expo began circulating through emails and social media incorrectly
captioned as “a baseball stadium that was repurposed as a residential
neighborhood.”
According to another photographer, Ned Bunnell, who
remembers going to the stadium with his boys to watch the Hawks play,
the housing expo was a failure because the Japanese were not interested
in western style housing and the quality of construction was not up to
their expectations.
Ned Bunnell’s comment seems odd to me, because
judging from the dates the pictures were taken, the expo lasted at
least 8 years—an awfully long time for something that wasn’t successful.
Photo credit: kenichi.huang
Photo credit: Naoya Hatakeyama
Photo credit: fudoki